DOCTOR DEATH

SAW X Get ready to squirm:Jigsaw is back with a missing piece of the puzzle…

Setting its 10th film between its first two sees the Saw franchise head towards a Fast & Furious-esque timeline

Director Kevin Greutert is no stranger to Saw, having previously helmed parts six and seven (erroneously titled The Final Chapter) of the longrunning gorno franchise. Since then there have been two further attempts to restart those torture traps, with 2017’s Jigsaw and 2021’s Spiral (both written by Saw X scribes Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger). It was never a given that Greutert would return. Until, that was, he saw the script for Saw X.

‘I started reading it and was like, “Oh my God, this is really good,”’ Greutert tells Teasers enthusiastically. ‘It’s very John Kramer-driven. A really smart story… and, maybe more than anything, it’s very emotional. Like, in a shocking way. There’s a lot of places where I kind of well up and feel very moved by what we pulled off.’

That emotional gravitas seems to be down, in large part, to the return of Tobin Bell as serial killer Jigsaw AKA John Kramer. Seen in the original trilogy battling terminal cancer, Kramer hated the ungrateful attitude he believed most people had to life – something he sought to cure by placing them in gruesome games designed to kickstart their survival instincts. But with Kramer (spoilers!) dying in the finale of Saw III, Bell’s appearances have since been relegated to flashbacks and an increasingly complicated series of recordings made before his death. Until now.

‘That’s what I like the most about it,’ says Greutert of Bell’s centrality to Saw X. ‘While it has twists and reveals, it’s less of a convoluted puzzle than it is just a journey with John.’ That journey appears to be both literal and figurative, with the film taking place in-between 2004’s Saw and 2005’s Saw II as Kramer (still alive at this point in the timeline) travels to Mexico to seek experimental medical treatment for his cancer. However, when scam artists trick John, they find themselves falling into his own unique brand of moral reckoning.

‘It’s less of a convoluted puzzle than a journey with John Kramer’

KEVIN GREUTERT

It’s territory Greutert has explored before, with Saw VI being a biting satire of the US healthcare system. And although the director claims Saw X is ‘not a political movie’, there’s still a message beneath the meat. ‘Right now, there seems to be a group of people that feel OK about lying very publicly, and they’re getting away with it,’ he reflects. ‘It makes me really angry. And I think it makes John Kramer angry as well.’ With the trailer showing John instructing one fraudster to conduct DIY brain surgery on himself, it seems that this anger will be very much worked out on screen. How this all ties together with returning original-movie character Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) and potentially other Jigsaw acolytes remains to be seen, but one thing’s for sure: live or die, we can’t wait to find out.

SAW X IS IN CINEMAS FROM 29 SEPTEMBER.